Using XP SP3, how to get rid of boot loaders?

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Doe
  • Start date Start date
J

John Doe

Most of the day I have spent playing with boot loaders, recovery CDs,
and installations of various Windows. Currently only Windows XP is
installed, but I have remnants of three boot loaders during restart.
The Windows 7 beta boot loader, Acronis OS Selector, and Windows XP.
During reboot, the Acronis OS Selector must be bypassed with F6 or it
fails and shuts down my system. Then comes the uninstalled Windows 7
beta boot loader, it shows three selections (Windows XP and two
Windows 7 versions). Then the Windows XP loader comes up briefly. I
can handle the Windows XP boot loader through Startup and Recovery, no
problem.

How do I get rid of the Acronis and Windows 7 boot loaders, leaving
Windows XP bootable?

Thanks.

For what it's worth...

I have three disk manager boot CDs... Disk Director, Partition
Manager, and Partition Magic. All three of them fail to function or
even recognize the hard drive.

I have fresh backup copies of important data to removable media. But
my Windows XP installation is very well developed and I would like to
keep that (and luckily so far I have). Currently I do not have a large
enough secondary media to copy the Windows installation so that then I
could format my main hard drive.
 
John said:
Most of the day I have spent playing with boot loaders, recovery CDs,
and installations of various Windows. Currently only Windows XP is
installed, but I have remnants of three boot loaders during restart.
The Windows 7 beta boot loader, Acronis OS Selector, and Windows XP.
During reboot, the Acronis OS Selector must be bypassed with F6 or it
fails and shuts down my system. Then comes the uninstalled Windows 7
beta boot loader, it shows three selections (Windows XP and two
Windows 7 versions). Then the Windows XP loader comes up briefly. I
can handle the Windows XP boot loader through Startup and Recovery, no
problem.
Click to expand...

You talking about:

fdisk /mbr

??

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/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (Xubuntu 8.04.2) Linux 2.6.28.8
^ ^ 17:13:01 up 5 days 23:37 2 users load average: 1.02 1.01 1.00
???! ???! ???! ???! ???! ???! ????? (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa
 
Most of the day I have spent playing with boot loaders, recovery CDs,
and installations of various Windows. Currently only Windows XP is
installed, but I have remnants of three boot loaders during restart.
The Windows 7 beta boot loader, Acronis OS Selector, and Windows XP.
During reboot, the Acronis OS Selector must be bypassed with F6 or it
fails and shuts down my system. Then comes the uninstalled Windows 7
beta boot loader, it shows three selections (Windows XP and two
Windows 7 versions). Then the Windows XP loader comes up briefly. I
can handle the Windows XP boot loader through Startup and Recovery, no
problem.

How do I get rid of the Acronis and Windows 7 boot loaders, leaving
Windows XP bootable?

Thanks.

For what it's worth...

I have three disk manager boot CDs... Disk Director, Partition
Manager, and Partition Magic. All three of them fail to function or
even recognize the hard drive.

I have fresh backup copies of important data to removable media. But
my Windows XP installation is very well developed and I would like to
keep that (and luckily so far I have). Currently I do not have a large
enough secondary media to copy the Windows installation so that then I
could format my main hard drive.
Click to expand...

If you're willing to use a linux Live CD for the 'dd' tool, you can
clear the MBR *carefully* with a

dd if=/dev/zero bs=446 of=/dev/hda # IDE
dd if=/dev/zero bs=446 of=/dev/sda # SATA

The block size is first sector size minus 4 x 16 byte partition entries
plus a 2 byte magic number: 512 - (4 x 16 + 2) = 446

Then boot the winxp install CD and 'fixmbr' + 'fixboot' should
work.

Remove the hidden win7beta/vista 'boot' (I think) folder in the C:
root by taking ownership of it first, then deleting. Vista and
win7 don't use the boot.ini file.

Hope this helps :)

Grant.
 
John Doe said:
Most of the day I have spent playing with boot loaders, recovery CDs,
and installations of various Windows. Currently only Windows XP is
installed, but I have remnants of three boot loaders during restart.
The Windows 7 beta boot loader, Acronis OS Selector, and Windows XP.
During reboot, the Acronis OS Selector must be bypassed with F6 or it
fails and shuts down my system. Then comes the uninstalled Windows 7
beta boot loader, it shows three selections (Windows XP and two
Windows 7 versions). Then the Windows XP loader comes up briefly. I
can handle the Windows XP boot loader through Startup and Recovery, no
problem.

How do I get rid of the Acronis and Windows 7 boot loaders, leaving
Windows XP bootable?
Click to expand...
You need to use a Windows XP installation disc, boot with it, go to
Repair, Command Line and then type in:

FIXMBR
FIXBOOT

Job done.
 
I fail to see the point of zeroing MBR boot code.
Fixmbr alone restores the "active partition" loader, and fixboot restores boot sector's "ntldr"
loader.
 
You need to use a Windows XP installation disc, boot with it, go to
Repair, Command Line and then type in:

FIXMBR
FIXBOOT

Job done.

--
Conor

I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't
looking good either. - Scott Adams
Click to expand...

There's also a way to add the recovery console to the XP boot menu,
using this method in Windows XP: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/win_xp_rec..htm
.. I'm not sure how is does it though, but it is a nice timesaver.

I quite like grub4dos as a boot loader. By using its ability to boot a
bootable iso cd image (like the plop boot manager which can boot usb
hdds and cds even on bios that don't support usb booting), it makes a
powerful boot-time utility.
This page describes how to combine plop and grub4dos:
http://grub4dos.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?title=Mr&printable=yes
 
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